Ofcom to Open UK 5G Mobile Auction of 26GHz and 40GHz Bands on 17th Sept

The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today revealed that they will begin accepting applications from network operators for their auction of the 26GHz and 40GHz millimetre wave (mmW) bands from 17th September 2025. The large chunk of radio spectrum will be used by mobile operators to deliver faster 5G data (broadband) services.

At present the major mobile providers (EE, O2 and VodafoneThree – Vodafone and Three UK) already have access to several 5G capable bands between 700MHz and 3.8GHz. Such frequencies reflect the same sort of mid-band radio spectrum that mobile network operators have been using since the advent of the first 3G and 4G networks.

The move to auction off 26GHz (25.1-27.5GHz) and 40GHz (40.5-43.5GHz) will complement those existing bands by providing lots of additional spectrum frequency, which means more data capacity for extremely fast speeds (e.g. multi-Gigabit). But such signals tend to be very weak and can’t cover a wider area without a much denser / more expensive network, which in practice means they’ll primarily be used for serving busy urban areas (shopping malls, airports etc. – “High Density Areas“) and fixed wireless broadband (FWA) links.

The good news is that after a long wait Ofcom has finally confirmed that they will start accepting applications from companies wishing to take part in the forthcoming spectrum auction from later this month – 17th September 2025. The first bidding is then expected to follow in October 2025 and we should thus have a good idea of who has won what by around the end of this year.

Any company wishing to take part in the auction must submit its application between 10:00am on 16th September 2025 and 4:00pm on 17th September 2025.

Ofcom Statement

Making mmWave spectrum available for new uses has the potential to deliver significant benefits to people and businesses in the UK.

This type of spectrum will enable services requiring very high capacity and speeds. It can play an important role in enabling mobile providers to meet current needs and future growth in demand for data – this means that it can help to improve capacity in busy places like train stations, busy urban areas, and sports and music venues where lots of people want to use their mobile phone at the same time.

As part of the auction launching today, we are awarding the spectrum in 68 “high-density” areas (that is, the towns and cities in the UK where we have identified high demand for mobile data).

We are already making spectrum in the 26 GHz band available to those who want a licence through our shared access licensing regime. This regime offers local area licences – for example this spectrum might be used to provide fixed wireless broadband in rural communities or to support automation in industrial sites, such as busy ports.

Details of the confirmed bidders, start date and results will be published on our website.

The regulator will be making the spectrum available in a clock auction (200MHz lots) with 15-year licences across 68 “high-density” areas (i.e. cities and select transport hubs). Interestingly, the UK is one of the first countries in Europe to award spectrum in the 40GHz band for mobile, although the 26GHz award is much more in keeping with the EU’s existing approach and many operators can already access it. Ofcom’s reserve prices for this could also be seen as modest when compared with other European auctions (£2m per 26GHz lot and £1m per 40GHz lot).

Luke Kehoe, Ookla’s European Industry Analyst, said: “While some EU member states (e.g., Germany, Sweden) have channelled mmWave into local or private licences, the UK’s single license covering all 68 high-density areas should make it easier for national neutral host and multi-venue operators to spread deployments across multiple sites, likely to raise take-up in the near-term (relative to purely local models). The UK’s approach aligns more closely with regimes in Spain (MNOs took ~1.8 GHz nationally in 2022), Croatia and Italy.”

However, the fact is that the use of mmW bands typically remains quite “hyper-local” (i.e. site-by-site rather than wide-area) in most countries, due to the aforementioned issues of limited coverage. Ofcom’s approach may have wider ambitions, but the economic realities of deploying in these bands will inevitably temper its reach. Not to mention any of the usual issues with limited support among end-user devices.